Some fict.

I finally got back to that little Oliver story I sketched out a couple weeks back. It felt good, it felt interesting. Hard to explain I guess.

Yesterday I picked it up again. As it had been a while and I hadn't revised it at all yet, it was basically a read through with comments and some markup. To be honest, I wish I had just read it first, then bothered with comments. The problem sections, the successful sections, all that came out better as I got through it. Certain earlier comments seemed like trifling worries as other more metasignificant things became apparent. But all in all it felt good; it felt...possible. This project is possible. There, I've said it.

big takeaways:

• Rick needs to be better defined, or earlier established, at least in my mind. Right now he's kind of carboardy at parts, esp the beginning.
• Oliver is doing okay development why; basically snark and sarcasm and an aversion to interpersonal connection, and i'm done. Expressing that is the tough part; it's a question of balance. How to inject those traits to create character effects and such without being intrusive, awkward, or contrived.
• the story definitely starts off kinda empty and actionless (is that it?); it's right about halfway through. Where Oliver proses/prosits "This wasn't what I'd hope for when I thoguht to drop by." Why is that, I wonder. I think because we're finally going inside these characters more; as a vignette and something of a character study, that's significant. Otherwise it feels like empty banter?
• as a housekeeping matter, I was trying out using word's annotations and comments and tracking changes and so forth. It was interesting. Got a bit more useful as I got the hang of it. Not sure exactly how this will work as a system yet, but it has definite possibilities.

So for today's work I'd like to...hm. options:

• liven up or figure out the opening section/exposition
• focus in on awkward passages and fix them
• rewrite? what should I rewrite? hm. I guess that's kinda tautalogical as any of the options will probably entail some manner of rewriting. hm. heh.
• figure out system for editing with Word's change tracking and comments?

God, this is really hard. It's new to me, though. I can write, yeah, and make a story with characters, yeah. But revision? and stuff? tough.

I might not even get all that much done today; I have to take care of a bunch of calls and shit, go grocery shopping, get hair cut (probs), and go to doctor. hm. I might be willing to poke at this later in the evening, but I'm kind of leery of that as it's outside my "schedule" and stuff. hm.